>>15981353Most Jews in Palestine during the time of the Roman's converted to Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The three flavours of Jew, of which the most familiar to us is the Ashkenazi, were Jewish converts on the Eurasian Steppe, in what today is Ukraine/Southern Russia. They got chased out by Tartars who themselves got "relocated" by Stalin. The Ashkenazi then fled west into present day Poland, then from there to the Rhine and France, then back again into Germany/Poland, then finally off to the US and Israel where they have zero ancestral claim, merely a religious one. Thus the Israeli's "rediscover" their religion and become Hassidic and whatnot because otherwise there could be no Jewish state as there are, essentially, no Jews.
There was a story I read in high school about a Jew who was living in Palestine when the Entente took it from the Ottomans right before the Balfour declaration, and then they were flooded with Russian Kulaks fleeing the revolution, he said that half of them weren't even Jews and the other half were Jews in name only. And where the great war had gone around Jerusalem by unspoken agreement by both sides, the newcomers brought Jerusalem's first taste of war since Saladin.
I wish I had have paid more attention to that teacher, she actually taught me a lot by stealth which I didn't realize till later. But I wasn't awake in high school.
